Thank you- we are pretty proud of her. The 11 days was

Posted By: Charlie Jones, Meridian 25 Tehani, Magnolia Beach, Texas
Date: 10/15/07 4:27p.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: What a beautiful job Charlie and Laura (Skipper Adams)

Laura's single hand cruise on Tehani. Together we've done a couple of 30+ day trips to Florida and return, mostly inshore but with several days offshore- one passage for 30 hours and one of close to 3 days. And we are prepping for some prolonged cruises beginning within the next year- 2, 3, 5 month or whatever- to Florida and then the Bahamas. Tehani's mast is wooden by the way and is the original one built in Holland in 1961. And there is a bulkhead directly under the mast, with a MASSIVE bronze step for the stick to sit in. Of course most of the later boats DID have aluminum sticks. Here's the mast step on a Meridian ( Tehani before we started on her) Learning Celestial would not be a bad idea, of course. We do have a plastic sextant and the courses for using it- one day we'll have time. Mean while we carry a pair of hand held GPS units- a Garmin 72 and a 76. Both will run off ships power and both will interface with our laptop. They are cheap enough so you COULD carry three if you felt the need. But knowing celestial would surely be nice. As for the weather fax, that's really not something that would be considered mandatory in my mind. On small boats, once you are "out there" it really makes little difference what comes up- you are gonna have to deal with it. You cannot outrun a front in a 25 foot boat. So you pick your best window and hope nothing crops up. Now doing long shore close in coastal passages might be different- then you'd have ample warning and might be able to duck into some inlet- but even then, IF you really get nailed, your safety is NOT towards shore- it's far safer to stand to sea, barring hurricanes of course. Besides, the things take a LOT of power and complex stuff like the printers- space would negate carrying something large. The Ham band is a good idea. So is a SSB- with a receiver you can at least LISTEN in on the various bands for info. But again, the power requirements on a small boat like our 25 makes it an iffy thing, for a transmitter anyway. A;ll a matter of compromise- every boat is a series of compromises after all.